Monday, April 11, 2011

Tanking Primes: Intro

Those who follow the mmo-c forums regularly, know I post there quite a lot, and most notably on subject of tanking mechanics. The problem is that, unlike some other sites, mmo-c doesn’t really have a good method in place to filter out repeated topics and we end up writing a lot of material over and over, and that’s quite draining. So I decided to start a tanking primer on my blog, to try cover some of the more common tanking mechanics.

Now before you mail about how the stuff I’ll be covering is basic and obvious, spare me. I am not trying to educate the educated, but teach the ignorant. It might make me sound a bit like a douche, but I do not use the word in a degratory manner. The simple fact is that a lot of tanks, even those who clear a lot of content, do not fully understand how their stats and mechanics work. E.g. if I had a penny every time the combat table is explained on the mmo-c forums, I could retire to the Bahamas.

In a way, this is not complicated stuff but then again, most of the tank theorycrafting isn’t overly complex, unless you get to the math of it all; e.g. how to figure the optimal benefits of parry and dodge, without suffering from DR and still taking Hold the Line into account. I might get to that as well, but I will start by covering the simpler mechanics and just see where it takes me. After all, lets face it, you don’t need to understand that stuff to be a good tank and unless you are really into that sort of thing, you will most likely only waste your time.

That brings us to the actual target audience of these articles; they will mainly be targeted at tanks of all flavors, but obviously less for others, due to diversity between the classes. Also, I play a warrior tank, so my main focus will be around mechanics that affect me personally. But like I said, there will be something for everyone.